Perhaps. However, there is also this comment which I believe to be on point: "I don't see any disadvantage -- the M-16A4 is a good weapon and in open combat in Afghanistan been proven better than the kiddy M-4 in open area combat." I suppose if you think we will ALWAYS be fighting in cities . . .

You men watch to much TV I've been 3% I'm a leader in Kentucky born Alabama offered to hel try to grow the group my number is 502-706-1632 why don't you be men and come to a man instead of posting bullshit you don't know anything about there's my number.

Well, Mr. Trask, I'm a bit busy at the moment and frankly completely uninterested in conversing with you on the phone. If I took the time to do so for every person who seems to have misunderstood the Three Percent concept I would get nothing else done. I will make the following observations.

1. Anyone who wants to "grow (their) group" two states away from where his ass is sitting by accepting help from any jackleg who "offers to help" is fairly begging to be laughed at. Because . . .

2. In any large, top-down organization (which you seem determined to have out of whatever motive that can only be guessed at -- failure to understand the nature of your enemy in a 4th Generation Warfare world; lack of imagination as to the probable negatives of such a move; misplaced enthusiasm at spreading an idea you apparently have failed to properly grasp; or, the simplest explanation, plain ego), personnel, my friend, is policy. If you read the post you take umbrage at, you should understand that your "help" presented himself as your representative with conduct that can be most charitably characterized as typical of a beer-swilling, pot smoking loose cannon.

That, sir, is not "bullshit (I) don't know anything about." I rather think the ignorance and the bullshit is the other way around. To use a phrase my Grandpa Vanderboegh taught me, "Son, don't try to teach your Grandma how to suck eggs." In over 20 years at this stuff, I've seen and heard it all before. You are merely the latest organizational empire builder I've run across, and not a very skillful one at that to judge from the conduct of your "help."

I urge you to rethink your principles in the light of my Three Percent Catechism. I also urge you to rethink your actions in building an "organization" that is so disorganized that you accept "help" from people who can only discredit you and the cause you claim to represent.

"No wonder free Americans are done pretending the gun argument is a rational debate and are responding with an extended middle finger – and the challenge to come and take their arms. The fact remains that any outright attempt to take the arms from tens of millions of American gun owners would almost certainly result in a second Civil War. And we all know how the first Civil War went for the Democrats."

It’s not exactly a traditional argument, but it’s certainly appropriate here. The fact is that there is no point in arguing with liberal gun-control advocates because their argument is never in good faith. They slander gun owners as murderers. They lie about their ultimate aim, which is to ban and confiscate all privately owned weapons. And they adopt a pose of reasonability, yet their position is not susceptible to change because of evidence, facts or law. None of those matter – they already have their conclusion. This has to do with power – their power.

You can’t argue with someone who is lying about his position or whose position is not based upon reason. You can talk all day about how crime has diminished where concealed carry is allowed, while it flourishes in Democrat blue cities where gun control is tightest. You can point to statistics showing that law-abiding citizens who carry legally are exponentially less likely to commit gun crimes than other people. You can cite examples of armed citizens protecting themselves and their communities with guns. You can offer government statistics showing how the typical American is at many times greater risk of death from an automobile crash, a fall, or poisoning than from murder by gun.

But none of that matters, because this debate is not about facts. It’s about power. The liberal anti-gun narrative is not aimed at creating the best public policy but at disarming citizens the liberal elite looks down upon – and for whom weapons represent their last-ditch ability to respond to liberal overreach. Put simply, liberal elitists don’t like the fact that, at the end of the day, an armed citizenry can tell them, “No.”

"When you put it terms of 'Black lives matter,' that implies that white lives, and Asian lives, and Eskimo lives, and every other kind of lives don't matter. So we get the feeling that if this is all about some sort of race test that we can't hope to pass to your satisfaction because of who we are, not how we act, then screw you buddy, we're not gonna play that game. So the rest of us get the feeling that if our lives don't matter then why the hell should we care if you think 'black lives matter?' And it's just a little ways from there for the rest of us to conclude that black lives DON'T matter either. . . So if you wanted a slogan that the Klan could understand and use to recruit with, well, brother, that's it. So that slogan is either the worst kind of stupidity or the bastard who thought it up is trying to separate you from your natural allies or get you killed, or both. I can't think of another slogan more calculated to get an American Hitler elected, and I HATE Nazis. . . And I'll tell you something else . . .(W)hen I see these black racists of Farrakhan's bunch talking about wanting a race war I'd say they haven't looked at how the numbers stack up. Because let me tell you something about white folks at their worst. When they get scared that people are trying to kill them just because of who they are, when they get pissed off along racial lines, they don't tear up their own neighborhoods or burn down their own communities like y'all do. They come to the neighborhoods of the people who threaten them and burn THEIR communities down and kill THEM. They have burned down whole CONTINENTS. And if you don't believe me, just ask the Indians." -- Mike Vanderboegh.

This is perhaps true, but beside the point for those who promote the BLM movement. They are uncaring about short term political consequences, focusing rather on the end game (commies are real good at that). The point is to foment racial war in the streets so as to win in the larger agenda of destroying the social fabric of the country so that people will turn to them out of fear. This was the sum and substance of the manipulation of the street riots in the 60s and 70s. It is also a strategy that fits well into the long-term plans of the Klan and neoNazis.

Why do you think Hitler organized the Brown shirts and sent them out into the streets to do battle with the socialists and communists? To create chaos that would frighten the German people into turning to him. And, oh by the way, it worked. Try to think like your enemy thinks and you'll be a lot less surprised when such things happen. Lifson is analyzing this crap using the old paradigm of "Only Elections Matter." Collectivists of every stripe understand that this is no longer true, that we are moving (indeed, THEY are moving the country) into the heretofore undiscovered country of complete societal breakdown, Balkanization and destruction of the rule of law. It is there, and only there, that their own cannibal proclivities can be sated by the feasting upon the dead corpse of the Founders' Republic and their own enemies bodies.

I once ran into a guy who scoffed at the concept of the armed citizenry standing up to the armed forces of the federal government, saying, "They'll just 'Seal Team 6' your ass." I admitted that it wouldn't even take ST6 to kill my ass, but I observed how little that would get the PTB in a "decapitation" strategy. And, apart from the many other factors in a civil war scenario that would make that a much less scary proposition than he imagined, we now know just how pitifully small ST6 really is. As formidable as they are, there ain't that many of them.

The highest compliment a man could receive in the Old West was: "He’ll do to ride the river with." This was a tribute from the old trail days when only the fearless dared to swim herds across treacherous rivers. -- Dr. Joe Wheeler.

I met Ray Thompson in October of 2005 in Hachita NM when we were all out on the border with the Minutemen. We shared a minor passion for archaeology, yet we were so busy that we had precious little time to compare notes about digs we had participated in. I wrote about the Hachita operation at the time in a short essay entitled The Magnificent Minutemen.

Ray picked up the nickname of "Quasimodo" because every night he could be found in the bell tower of the abandoned Catholic church in Hachita, scanning the valley below with night vision. Of Ray, Bob Wright recalls: "Today marks the sad loss of one of the essential personalities that made our efforts in New Mexico possible. Received the sad news this morning of the passing of Ray Thompson of Deming, New Mexico. Most will remember him by his radio call sign "Quasimodo." His tireless energy assured quality operations and his good humor helped us all through some tough hard days and nights. God rest you, Quasi!"

As for me, I'll let stand these final words from The Magnificent Minutemen as my eulogy to Ray:

History, for good or ill, is made by determined minorities. Never was that truer than among that small band of New Mexico Minutemen. They were dirty, unshaven and exhausted on their best day. They didn't look like much more than a small convention of the homeless. But by their presence and their gritty determination they were calling the shots on the border. They were pitiful, they were magnificent. I am proud to have known them and to have served with them. And if we can find more of their kind, we just might be able to save the country.

"If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? Of course not. You'd paddle it. . . I told you that 'juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue — indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a 'juvenile delinquent.' But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents — people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail." -- Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.), in Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.

Brazil-based handgun maker Forjas Taurus SA has agreed to a $39 million settlement in a class action lawsuit alleging some of the company’s most popular semi-automatic handguns can discharge when dropped and have a defective safety that allows the gun to fire even when it’s engaged.

According to court documents filed May 15 in a U.S. District Court in Florida, the company has agreed to pay up to $30 million to owners of nine separate handgun models who opt to send their pistols back, with owners receiving anywhere from $150 to $200 for their pistols depending on how many choose that option.

The agreement also will extend the warranty for the nine handgun models, allowing gun owners to send the pistols back to have the handguns inspected by Taurus technicians and address the “safety defects” alleged in the suit. Documents show the settlement could include as many as 100,000 handguns.

The settlement also calls for a maximum $9 million in attorney’s fees.

A Taurus official confirmed the settlement agreement, arguing the company does not admit any wrongdoing.

“The Taurus Companies do not admit liability in connection with the settlement,” the official told Grand View Outdoors. “If anyone has one of these pistols, we are happy to inspect it under the warranty and suggest that they send it to us so that we can do so.”

My oldest daughter carries a PT-745 as a personal protection piece (6+1). I carry a PT-145 (10+1). The dollar value of the sales offer is laughable, but we will be returning them to the factory for warranty inspection.

My latest foray to the various doctors left me with some time to kill between appointments and although my pockets were light there was a thrift store between them. Well, with my devotion to (and, it must be admitted, my addiction to) the best source of militia logistics and procurement, of course I had to stop. And what did I chance upon? Why this remarkable book that I had never heard of, but was instantly intrigued by: The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks by Amy Stewart. It set me back, after my old fart's discount, to the tune of 92 cents.

Just leafing through it and picking out topics taught me more than I had ever known about everything from molasses to monkey puzzle trees. I am looking forward to absorbing it from cover to cover in my insomniac reading program, but I have skimmed enough to know that this is a useful work for those of us looking for guidance in post-apocalyptic business ventures like moonshining, beer brewing, wine making and, in the case of the monkey puzzle tree, mudai fermenting.

"I'd like to be the King of all Londinium and wear a shiny hat." ― Malcolm Reynolds

I awoke this morning to an emailed link indicating that I now have something called "a filmography." It seems I'm getting credit for playing myself in Retro Report's documentary on the undying controversy over Waco. Now, that plus a dollar is insufficient to buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, so it is important to have a sense of perspective on such things. I pull my britches on one leg at a time like everyone else, and no amount of notoriety in a civilization on the verge of collapse will be recognized after its bloody fall. In the end, history will be amnesiac on the subject of Mike Vanderboegh. Who, today, remembers those individual Romans who tried to hold back the imperial rotting disease that lead to barbarian slaughter and subjugation -- to the destruction of their entire world? No one.

These four principles -- moral strength, physical readiness, no first use of force and no targeting of innocents -- are the hallmarks of the Three Percent ideal. Anyone who cannot accept them as a self-imposed discipline in the fight to restore the Founders' Republic should find something else to do and cease calling themselves a "Three Percenter."

Yet there are apparently many people who have adopted the moniker of Three Percenter, for whatever reason, but who wouldn't recognize these principles if they came up and bit them in the ass.

This was brought home to me once again on Monday when I received a distressed phone call from one of my old 1st Alabama Cavalry militia leaders from the 90s who had been to something advertised as a Three Percent meet and greet. The organizer of this event was the proclaimed and newly minted "President" of the Alabama Three Percent, one Phil Ingram. By his own statement, Mr. Ingram's claim to command of the Alabama Three Percent traces to his "appointment" to said post by one Robert Trask of Kentucky.

Okay.

Whatever.

This sort of empty "empire building" was one thing that made the 90s so problematic for the constitutional militia movement, and why I deliberately formulated the Three Percent idea as a movement, an idea, a philosophy and a discipline BUT NOT AN ORGANIZATION. Attempts at large regional, state or national organizations, anything beyond local formations, are subject to infiltration, dysfunction, discredit and collapse. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.

But mere empire building in this case would be unremarkable were it not for the very slender reed that Mr. Trask has, by Mr. Ingram's own claim, chosen to support the concept of the Three Percent in Alabama. By all accounts, Mr. Ingram arrived at the venue swilling beer as he unassed his vehicle and later graduated to joints. A few cursory questions revealed that said Mr. Ingram had never heard of me (which is certainly no sin) nor had he heard of, or internalized, the principles of the Three Percent (which is).

As Malcolm Reynolds observed, you may wish to be the King of Londinium and wear a shiny hat, but that does not make it so. So whenever someone comes up to you and claims to be a Three Percenter -- especially when he or she pretends to be a leader of Three Percenters -- a close eye upon their actions and a few simple questions from the Three Percent Catechism ought to determine whether they are persons of principle or poseurs and/or provocateurs.

Either Mr. Ingram or Mr. Trask, the putative kingmaker in this disaster-in-waiting, may contact me to dispute this account.

For the rest of the world, it is a tense moment. China consumes 50pc of global coal, 43pc of industrial metals and 23pc of grains, according to World Bank data. Brazil, Russia, South Africa and a string of commodity states face a double-barrelled stress test. The Chinese are freezing imports just as the US Federal Reserve drains worldwide dollar liquidity and prepares to raise rates, calling time on emerging markets that have together borrowed $4.5 trillion in US currency.

The Brazilian real fell to a 12-year low of 3.38 against the dollar on Monday. The South Africa rand hit a record low of 12.69. The Russian rouble flirted with the danger line of 60. It was the same story across much of the emerging market nexus. “One by one the dominoes are starting to fall,” said Societe Generale.

The administration must believe it’s okay to make stuff up, that the American public doesn’t really care and would rather be tweeting about Sharknado. But if it’s such a good deal, why does it need to be kept out of the sunlight? The administration’s stealth, subterfuge, and lies have revealed one very big truth: It knows the deal won’t withstand the scrutiny of the American people and their representatives.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

This week has been filled with stresses and strains. I'm exhausted from the struggles of trying to protect my friends from their wife-beating arsonist son-in-law (successfully) and yesterday moving Zoe back to Birmingham from Hattiesburg to take another job (also successfully, although the exertions in the heat with a mattress and box springs that wanted to leap off the top of the GMC Jimmy in what turned out to be a seven hour trek darn near killed me). Today will be taken up with the rearrangements attendant upon that move in order to get her settled. Thus does the Vanderboegh family finally say "adios" to the college town of H'burg -- thank and praise the Lord. Not that we don't have Southern Miss to thank for a lot of blessings, but there is a darker side to most college towns, not the least of which is the present-day "party" culture. Hattiesburg also has a lot of town-gown conflicts/crimes that go deliberately unreported by both university and local press, exacerbated by the recent rising boil of racial animosity ("Black lives matter, but F you, honky mofo.")

These past two weeks have also convinced me that I must crank back on some of the work I have been doing with national groups and events and see to my health and my own family responsibilities, both of which I have abused terribly this past year or do. Saving the Republic is all well and good but you can't accomplish anything if you're dead. That is not to say that I will be ceasing my efforts at national armed civil disobedience (and the fun part, smuggling) but I am going to have to moderate some. The zombie apocalypse portends, and my own preparations to see to my family have been sorely neglected because of time, energy and especially monetary resources that have been spent on larger (but not necessarily more important) issues. Indeed, I have fallen down on my responsibilities to my own family. I must remedy that.

A big part of that is finishing Absolved, as I am unceasingly reminded by y'all. The black dog banished by the motivation of looming events, I have been working fitfully on it even throughout this hell week and also an essay wrapped around this T.R. Fehrenbach quote:

To make a war, sometimes it is necessary that everyone guess wrong. . . A war is made when a government believes that only through war, AND AT NO SERIOUS RISK TO ITSELF, it may gain its ends. (Emphasis supplied, MBV) -- This Kind of War, pp. 32-33.

I'll try to have more later. Now, just exactly where do I put the stuff from Hannah's old room and how do I find the the time and energy to crop back the jungle in the back yard? It is times like these that I realize that even the Founders likely had to remember to feed the dog, carry out the garbage and make sure the family horse was fed, watered and curry combed. Of course Sam Adams didn't worry about the bills -- he just didn't pay them. Not an option for me, I'm afraid.

New York state has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. Compliance with those laws is another matter. New York passed a broad package of gun regulations after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., despite the objections of hunters and gun rights advocates. Now it appears that many gun owners are refusing to comply with a key provision that requires the registration of so-called assault weapons.

After multiple requests for comment were ignored, Yellowhammer was contacted Wednesday by ALDOT spokesperson Tony Harris, who said readdressing the policy is not currently a priority for the agency, although he acknowledged they had received some public opposition to the gun free zones. “We don’t want this to be a distraction for us,” said Harris. “You can probably imagine we have a lot of issues we deal with day in and day out.”

Just got the call that as of twenty minutes ago the arsonist was arrested in Mississippi. This comes after a long chat I had downtown at Sheriff's headquarters this morning after my first doctor's appointment.

"In this photo taken Tuesday, July 21, 2015, Allen Bowles, left, and Clint Janney stand guard outside a military recruiting center in Columbus, Ohio. The men are members of the 3 Percent Irregulars Militia, and say they plan to protect the center until the government provides its own security."

You know, they say that gettin' old ain't for the fainthearted. Given my experiences in the three and a half years since they took the stomach tumor and eighty percent or so of my guts, I reckon they're right. Still, they wrote me off as a poor actuarial risk at the time of the surgery and then again when the hospital gave me a MRSA infection but I'm still here so I figure God's still got something in mind for me. Now, if I can just figure out what it is . . . In any case, I'm trying to make what time I have left count. Whether I succeed or not is for God to judge later. Drink water and drive on, as my son says.

I'll try to have more this afternoon. No rest for the weary, as they also say.

As I have observed many times before, you may get away with spitting in God's eye for a while, but sooner or later God spits back. And when he does, cities dissolve in fire, civilizations are destroyed, and entire peoples are enslaved. Someone in this country is going to have have to pay for the holocaust of 50 million (and counting) dead innocents, not to mention all the other godless abominations that have become commonplace. I rather suspect that it will be the entire country that pays the price.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms released the 2015 Firearms Commerce update. It showed firearm sales nearly doubled between 2010 and 2013. . . The ATF said 5.5 million firearms were manufactured in 2010. By 2013, that number was almost twice as much, with close to 11 million guns produced nationwide. Dury's Gun Shop owner John Dury said politics explains the boost.

And this: “A service member from inside the facility observed him and opened fire on him, firing several rounds at him,” said Edward W. Reinhold, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Knoxville office. Two guns belonging to service members were recovered from the scene, he said, and “at least one of those weapons had been discharged.”

So, what can we conclude? That some of these heroes armed themselves IN DIRECT DISOBEDIENCE OF THE RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT-APPROVED DEATH ZONE AND SAVED LIVES AS A RESULT.

I will not waste your time arguing points of logic or law, however, knowing bureaucracies such as yours are largely impervious to both. Let me explain what comes after you ignore the current switchboard meltdown you have created.

Introductions first, though. My name is Mike Vanderboegh. I am the citizen journalist who, with my friend David Codrea, first broke the story of the Fast and Furious scandal on my blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, on the Internet in December 2010. We also got the ATF whistleblowers together with the senators and then with Sharyl Attkisson, then of CBS News, and the rest, as they say, is history. (See Sharyl's recent book Stonewalled --we're in Chapter 2.) I have been a Second Amendment activist for the past 20 years and I am founder of the national Three Percent movement. The Three Percenters have been denounced by none other than that paragon of moral virtue Bill Clinton and I have been a perennial favorite on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of dangerous folks. But then as my friend Kurt Hofmann says, "It is better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable."

More to the present point, however, I have been a national leader in the armed civil disobedience "I Will Not Comply" movement that has flouted the post-Sandy Hook anti-firearms laws in the states of CT, NY, MD, CO, WA and OR. I am proud to say that I have broken all those laws publicly over the past two and a half years and each time the state authorities have declined to arrest me and my friends, perhaps because we were armed and in considerable numbers each time we did it. Indeed, the authorities of those states don't seem to know whether to defecate or go blind when confronted with citizens that they have declared to be newly-minted felons. We don't back down, we don't cower when confronted with state threats, and we most assuredly don't act like any class of criminal they have ever seen before.

I tell you this to assure you that the choice of defecation or blindness is currently headed your way. For if you ignore the telephone blitz you are currently experiencing, I will be my honor and my pleasure to lead "I Will Not Comply" armed civil disobedience actions numbering (at least) in the hundreds of participants at every Alabama Welcome Center in the state, as well as in front of your headquarters.

So, I hope you save us the trouble and reverse this dangerous and deadly policy. But if not, you will look back on the switchboard meltdown with fondness for the good old days when bureaucrats thought they could ignore the law and the will of the people.

In Pinson, Alabama, there is an extended family who lives in fear. On Sunday their home was firebombed by an out-of-control male (I will not not use the word "man" to describe him, for such a cowardly bully is in no sense a real man) who is their son-in-law, their brother-in-law, their uncle, their father. Yes, you got that right, this piece of work firebombed the home where his own children were staying. It was only an act of God (or the perpetrator's own incompetence) that no one was killed or the house burned to the ground. The perp had been on a downward spiral for some time, having been charged with violent threats and assaults of family members and acquaintances. After the firebombing, he swore to a deputy in a cell phone call that he wouldn't be taken alive. The cops took that as a threat to them, which perhaps it was. However, he is, at this moment, still at large and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department seems to be largely unconcerned, or perhaps incompetent, to do anything about it.

No one in the home sleeps more than a few hours at a time, and that but lightly, startling at every night noise, every dog bark, every revved engine in the darkness. The family is so frightened that they refuse to talk to the media, lest it provoke more violence on the part of this maniac or his friends. He threw the firebomb, eluded the Sheriff's Deputy who was right on his car's bumper when he committed the deed, and hasn't been seen since Sunday evening, yet his brooding, violent presence looms over the home every instant.

I was there yesterday morning and afternoon, standing guard over the house and the kids inside while the adults worked or went out to pay bills. One of the young nieces of this POS, upon hearing my voice, screamed out in terror, "I hear Uncle David!" She had to be reassured, for the umpteenth time, that "Uncle David" wasn't there and wasn't coming back, although all of us knew that could well be a lie.

No one knows where David Galbreath, wife-beater and arsonist who targeted the dwelling where his own children were staying, is at the moment -- least of all, it seems, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. The only thing that might motivate them is the prospect of more publicity that shines a light on their failures to use all their resources on the case. Because of the family's terror-induced silence, that is something that is least likely to happen at the moment. To those of us desperate to help, it the most frustrating thing imaginable.

So, in Pinson, Alabama, there is a family who lives in fear. Keep them in your prayers. It is all they have at the moment between them and "Uncle David."

Now you can send this link without having to search out the speech in a larger video. Please do so. (It is significant that the Birmingham News, which had reporters in the room and had covered the initial demands of the cultural cleansers with front page stories, refused to cover my speech.)

Too bad Galbreath hasn't yet had the guts to carry out his announced "suicide by cop" plan, for the rest of the family will be living in terror as long as he is out roaming around. In the meantime, I'll be spending time helping out. More posts later.

Meet David Lee Galbreath. He is the son-in-law of some close friends of mine who has been on a downward spiral for the last few months. This story tells briefly how he spent his Sunday. It is full of omissions and inaccuracies, but it will do to start with:

First of all, he did not try to burn down his wife's house, he firebombed his in-laws' house (my friends) by throwing a Molotov cocktail into the carport in the late afternoon WHILE HIS OWN YOUNG SON and others were playing there. Fortunately it was an amateurish job, no one was burned and the fire was quickly extinguished. A Jefferson County deputy was right on his tail a moment after the deed as he fled (having been called earlier when David had been spotted at his wife's home further up the hill) but he eluded them by blowing through stop lights and stop signs, convincing the cop that further pursuit was going to get some innocent killed.

Later on, the cop answered a call from him to his wife's cell phone and he indicated that he was not going to surrender, that he would not be going to prison, and that the cops would have to kill him. Presumably this is the "threat to attack the police" mentioned in the stories on all the local morning news shows here.

What the Sheriff's Department did not tell the media: This has been an escalating case of domestic violence and deadly threats for some time, and there are outstanding cases and protective orders in place after he beat his wife (who is half his size). There have been chances when the Sheriff's Department could have held him but they let him out on recogs and a signature bond from his motorcycle gang chick girlfriend. Indeed, the JCSD seized some of his many weapons when they busted him on the domestic abuse charge, but they did not get them all because they could not get in his gun safe and failed to secure it until they could. Those that aren't in Galbreath's car right now are probably in the hands of his gangbanger buddies that he was messing around with. With the Sheriff's Department's usual efficiency, we'll probably be seeing those weapons surface in various crimes over the next year or so.

Anyway, I'll be helping my friends out this morning, seeing to the security of their property while they deal with the legal issues. I'll try to have more later.

Given that the Trump rise in poll numbers and attention seems to have sucked all the oxygen out of the room for Cruz, this seems both ironic and suicidal. "Cruz on Trump: Others 'Smack' Him; I Back Him." On the other hand, it may be extremely canny and based upon the expectation that Trump will implode and positions Cruz to pick up his supporters with the pitch: "I tell the truth like Trump, only I'm actually sane."

Subject: Provoking a bloody civil war seems an odd way to reduce "gun violence.'

Dear Editor,

If enacted, John Morgan's benighted proposal to prohibit handguns to law-abiding folks (for criminals will never be bound by such a pie-in-the-sky proposal, criminals being, well, criminals) will presumably be backed by all the force of state violence. Of course, turning millions of his heretofore peaceable fellow citizens into felons seems to miss his notice entirely. And what will he do when we refuse to be disarmed without a fight? Provoking a bloody civil war seems an odd way to reduce "gun violence.' But for sheer collectivist hallucination and complete ignorance of the Law of Unintended Consequences, he must be congratulated. If not drug induced, it is an Olympian feat of blindfolded tap dancing in a minefield.

U.S. Army Soldiers; marshals; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents gathered at Tripler Army Medical Center’s Physical Fitness Center, July 8-12, for training in the Modern Army Combatives Program. The noncommissioned officers of TAMC’s Troop Command led the training for this elite group of island warriors.

Ask and ye shall receive.Courtesy of a reader. Feel free to copy this and have it printed out as a sticker form in color or black and white (whichever is cheapest to you) and let the fun begin.

And you may file this under: "Desperately seeking relevance (and money)." I am informed by readers who frequent his site (as I do not) that unrepentant federal extortionist Kerodin has stolen the Death Zone sticker idea, with the date stamps conclusively demonstrating that mine was up first. I suppose now that I will receive a demand letter asking for money to print my own idea, like he did with the poor gun manufacturers after he attempted to trademark the Roman numeral III. It seems there is no idea that I can have that Kerodin cannot steal (or pollute) if it is for money. Of course there is that matter of the missing tens of thousands that his board quit him over so I guess he needs to replenish the coffers. And I will admit he's had some other really spectacular ORIGINAL ideas on his own, like the III Arms business (his business partner on that one has now, I am told, cut off all contact with him and surrendered his FFL) and the Citadel (anybody living there yet?) and my personal favorite, the Magic Bus, for which he was soliciting money to visit the site of any future Bundy Ranch-style situation (even though he refused to go to the original stand-off and warned others to stay away). But other than that, he's firing on all cylinders. (Cue responding violence-tinged raving hissy fit in one, two, three . . .)

The net effect of this capitulation will be not only to endanger our Middle East allies now under threat from Iran and its proxies, but also to endanger our own naval forces in the Persian Gulf. Imagine how Iran’s acquisition of the most advanced anti-ship missiles would threaten our control over the gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, waterways we have kept open for international commerce for a half-century. . .

The action now shifts to Congress. The debate is being hailed as momentous. It is not. It’s irrelevant. Congress won’t get to vote on the deal until September. But Obama is taking the agreement to the U.N. Security Council for approval within days . Approval there will cancel all previous U.N. resolutions outlawing and sanctioning Iran’s nuclear activities. Meaning: Whatever Congress ultimately does, it won’t matter because the legal underpinning for the entire international sanctions regime against Iran will have been dismantled at the Security Council. Ten years of painstakingly constructed international sanctions will vanish overnight, irretrievably. . .

Iran will be flush with cash, legitimized as a normal international actor in good standing, recognized (as Obama once said) as “a very successful regional power.” Stopping Iran from going nuclear at that point will be infinitely more difficult and risky. Which is Obama’s triumph. He has locked in his folly. He has laid down his legacy, and we will have to live with the consequences for decades.

“At the operational level (of 4th Generation Warfare), all an opponent has to move is ideas. He can do so through a wide variety of methods, from email to snail mail to personal courier to messages embedded in classified advertisements. He will try to submerge his communications in the noise of the everyday activity that is an essential part of modern society. It will be extraordinarily difficult to detect the operational level activities of a 4GW opponent.” -- LTC Thomas X. Hammes The Sling and the Stone, Page 218.

So, another Jihadi has murdered four Marines in Chattanooga. So what? What about this WASN'T absolutely predictable and predicted? Arguments over whether he represented "international" or "home-grown, domestic" terror or even the characterization of him as a "lone wolf" (as if that represents some sort of solace), are utterly beside the point and irrelevant. I have written and spoken about 4GW many times before. The Jihadi version of it is a weaponized idea, indiscriminate and evil beyond measure. Comments on this blog and elsewhere that the US federal government is a greater threat to our lives and liberty than any Jihadi are also true, but irrelevant to the families of the dead Marines and everyone else for that matter. The Jihadis have determined that they are in a global war with us, all of us -- our families, our friends, the innocent, wherever we live and whatever we do. We cannot opt out of it because they will not let us.

"You think you've been getting away with it all this time, standing by. Well, son... your bystanding days are over! You're in it now, up to your neck!" -- Gregory Peck as Mallory in The Guns of Navarone.

A man may make many enemies in his life, some intentionally, some unintentionally. That he must confront all of them, regardless of their point of attack is obvious. Again, nothing happened in Chattanooga yesterday that wasn't perfectly predictable. And having been predicted, most of us yawned and went back to sleep. Which leads me to the central lesson of Chattanooga. Take a good look at the photo above. "Gun-free zones" are nothing but death zones for the innocent. As an American at war, whether you chose to enlist in that war, you're in it, up to your neck. You MUST disobey such posted death zone signs just as you wouldn't enter camp gates unarmed with that other big collectivist lie of history posted on them -- "Arbeit Macht Frei."

As I watched yesterday, the overwhelming emotion I felt was sadness. Not for the dead but for the fact that Tennesseans -- not just Americans but SOUTHERNERS, by God -- have become so gelded, so self-neutered as to react to the attack like a flock of frightened sheep. Where was the guy who ignored the victim disarmament zone signs, who could have produced a handgun and shot the Jihadi in the back as he attacked? Where was the armed citizen who takes responsibility for the protection of himself/herself and others? Nowhere in evidence. It is that silent passing of the America I grew up in that I mourn above all.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.